Scientists are puzzled by results of experiments in which subatomic particles appeared to travel slightly faster that the speed of light.
Scientists are puzzled by results of experiments conducted between the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Switzerland and a laboratory in Italy, in which subatomic particles appeared to travel slightly faster that the speed of light.
Researchers said physicists spent nearly six months checking and rechecking before making an announcement.
The result, which threatens to upend a century of physics, including Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, was published overnight on Cornell University's website.
Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.
"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."
If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.
That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.
The totally unexpected finding emerged from research by physicists working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN in Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy.
A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos - tiny particles that pervade the cosmos - were fired over a period of three years from CERN towards Gran Sasso 730km away, where they were picked up by giant detectors.
Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second, but the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds - or 60 billionths of a second - less than light beams would have taken.
"It is a tiny difference," said Mr Ereditato, who also works at Berne University in Switzerland, "but conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent."
Mr Ereditato declined to speculate on what it might mean if other physicists, who will be officially informed of the discovery at a meeting in CERN today, found that OPERA's measurements were correct.
"I just don't want to think of the implications," he told Reuters. "We are scientists and work with what we know."
Much science-fiction literature is based on the idea that if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible.
The existence of the neutrino, an elementary subatomic particle with a tiny amount of mass created in radioactive decay or in nuclear reactions such as those in the Sun, was first confirmed in 1934, but it still mystifies researchers.
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